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International Infection Prevention Week
International Infection Prevention Week (IIPW) is an annual observance to recognize the importance of infection prevention in improving healthcare and saving lives. This year the theme is “Moving the Needle on Infection Prevention.” APIC has developed downloadable infographics, logos and web images, social media materials, and new day-by-day “Moving the Needle” content to help educate all audiences on infection prevention and control and the role we all have in creating a safer world through the prevention of infection. This one-week observance occurs October 13th - 19th!
2024 APIC and NHSN Fall Session: Infection Prevention at Home and Abroad
Join the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) and NHSN for International Infection Prevention Week! On October 16, 2024, there will be three live NHSN sessions focused on global perspectives taking place from 9–11:30 AM ET. Additionally, there will be two pre-recorded sessions available for attendees to view on demand. There is no cost for non-APIC members for the NHSN sessions, but you still must register. Please email with any questions.
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US Antibiotic Awareness Week
U.S. Antibiotic Awareness Week and World Antimicrobial Awareness Week (USAAW) is a one-week observance occurring November 18–24, 2024. The purpose is to raise awareness of the importance of appropriate antibiotic and antifungal use. CDC's theme for USAAW 2024 is "Fighting Antimicrobial Resistance Takes All of Us." Resources are available in the USAAW Toolkit to help you and your partners participate
New Tools to Improve HAI/AR Outbreak Practices
The Council for Outbreak Response: Healthcare-Associated Infections and Antimicrobial-Resistant Pathogens’ (CORHA) updated website now offers enhanced access to valuable tools. The new platform is a comprehensive resource for healthcare professionals, policymakers, and public health experts, supporting efforts to detect, investigate, control, and prevent HAI/AR outbreaks. Visit the new CORHA website for more information.
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New Flyer to Improve Vaccine Confidence
The Washington State Department of Health’s (DOH) Office of Immunization partnered with the Healthcare-Associated Infections and Antibiotic Resistance Unit to develop a Vaccinate with Confidence flyer to address respiratory immunization challenges in long-term care in response to a survey conducted earlier this year. The survey found that providers are combatting high levels of misinformation and hesitancy from LTC residents. This tool was designed specifically for use in long-term care settings to help providers grow and advance vaccine confidence. This resource can be shared at the facility with residents, family, visitors and staff. Local Health Jurisdictions can also share with their LTC providers.
Start vaccine conversations by listening to and addressing any concerns, then making a strong vaccine recommendation. Ensuring a culture of vaccination requires all hands-on-deck. As a best practice, all staff should understand and be able to share reasons for LTC community members to choose vaccination against common respiratory diseases.
Comagine Health Introduces Two New Immunization Resources for Providers
New resources include a patient-focused clinic poster that covers adult vaccination recommendations and an adult immunization improvement rate calculator for measuring improvement in vaccination rates.
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Infection Prevention and Control |
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IPC Q3 Snapshot now available!
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Antimicrobial Stewardship |
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Acute Care Stewardship Resources
Blood Culture Vial Conservation Guidance Document
BD Life Sciences is experiencing a temporary shortage of plastic blood culture vials from their supplier. This document, created by the WA DOH AMS team, provides guidance and practical recommendations to safely and effectively reduce the use of unneeded blood cultures.
Join the NHSN Antibiotic Use (AU) User’s Group
Acute Care Hospitals in Washington are invited to join DOH’s NHSN AU User's Group, which aims to support hospitals in utilizing their NHSN AU data effectively. Participants will gain valuable insights into generating reports in NHSN, analyzing and interpreting antimicrobial use data, and ultimately improving antimicrobial stewardship practices within their facilities. Facilities participating in the User’s Group are granted access to an interactive dashboard for benchmarking data against other hospitals, facilitating continuous quality improvement efforts. Register today!
Long-Term Care Stewardship Resources
Join the Skilled Nursing Facility Antimicrobial Stewardship (SNF AMS) Collaborative!
Enhance your antimicrobial stewardship expertise and skills through WA DOH’s SNF AMS Collaborative. The collaborative will run from September 2024 – May 2025, and will consist of monthly 45-min sessions. Each session will include a concise presentation, hands-on activities, and Q&A. Benefits of participation include improved antibiotic use and survey readiness. Earn a certificate upon completion, demonstrating your enhanced stewardship expertise. Learn more and register today!
Free Stewardship Resources for Consultant Pharmacists
WA DOH is offering to provide the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists' Antimicrobial Stewardship Toolkit for free to consultant pharmacists providing services at long-term care facilities in Washington State. The toolkit offers practical guidance for starting, growing, and maintaining an antimicrobial program, ensuring compliance with CMS Long-Term Care regulations. Learn more and register today!
Outpatient Stewardship Resources
Penicillin Allergy Delabeling Resources for Pediatrics
Developed in partnership with Seattle Children’s, this patient education handout explains why it is important to have penicillin allergies assessed in children. Access this resource in English and Spanish.
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Celebrating Successes: HC FONT
Healthcare Facility Outbreak Notification Tool (HC FONT) is a reporting tool managed by Washington Department of Health (DOH) and used by some local health jurisdictions (LHJs) to receive communicable disease outbreak and COVID case reports from healthcare facilities. Used by long term care facilities, acute care hospitals, and outpatient settings, this tool helps facilities fulfill legal reporting requirements in a secure, easy to use environment, and saves local health jurisdictions time and resources in processing and triaging reports.
Earlier this year, DOH staff produced automated scripts that allowed COVID case and outbreak reports to move from the HC FONT platform to Washington Disease Reporting System (WDRS), Washington state’s secure communicable disease surveillance system. HC FONT has nearly eliminated the need for manual data entry by LHJ staff for COVID-specific reports from healthcare facilities. Without HC FONT, data entry into WDRS takes roughly 6 minutes per COVID outbreak and roughly 5 minutes per COVID case. With FONT, these scripts have saved LHJs nearly 100 hours over manual data entry in the last six months |
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Note: Not all LHJs use HC FONT for communicable disease outbreak reporting. The map below shows which counties participate in HC FONT. Interested LHJs are encouraged to reach out to HAIEpiOutbreakTeam@doh.wa.gov for more information. Healthcare facilities should reach out to their LHJ to learn about county-specific reporting preferences and requirements.
Counties Participating in HC FONT
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Don’t Forget!
Project Firstline offers several training and education opportunities to help you out during onboarding, annual training, and continuing education! See how one of the following programs can help you out today!
Interactive online training modules: Available for CE/CNEs at no cost! Topics range from hand hygiene, respiratory droplets, to enhanced barrier precautions.
Text Messages: Short, weekly text messages on important infection prevention topics. Text “JoinWAIPC” to 59309.
Podcasts: Short podcast episodes ranging from basic infection prevention topics to IP in different settings to an antimicrobial stewardship mini-series.
Go to our website for more WA Project Firstline information and resources!
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National Healthcare and Safety Network (NHSN) |
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Bimonthly NHSN User Group for Hospitals
Join us for the NHSN Hospital User Group calls. We will host these calls every other month. Please register in advance for this call series. Upcoming meetings are as follows.
Please reach out to the NHSN Epi Team if you have any questions or have topic ideas for any of the calls.
Monthly Long-Term Care NHSN User Group
You are invited to register for the monthly NHSN skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) forum to share and, collaborate, improve reporting accuracy, and increase user knowledge. Calls are scheduled for the second Thursday of the month, 11:00 a.m. –noon. Upcoming meetings are as follows:
- November 14, 2024
- December 12, 2024
Please reach out to the NHSN Epi Team for more information.
SNF Reporting Changes Now in Effect – Respiratory Pathogens and Vaccination (RPV)
Effective for reporting week of Sept 30, 2024, COVID-19 Up to Date definition now includes 2024-2025 updated COVID-19 vaccine.
In addition, facilities will report required resident Respiratory Pathogen vaccination, case, and hospitalization data on a newly combined reporting form. Reporting for flu and RSV remains optional. All data being collected is now on a weekly basis. Vaccination reporting will continue to be cumulative. New cases and hospitalizations will now be reported for the week of data collection.
For staff data, there is no change to the vaccination data being collected while COVID-19 cases will no longer be reported.
The updated RPV webpage includes weekly data collection forms and instructions, and webinar links. Updated training slides are available.
All resources have been moved to a new RPV Resource webpage including recent training slides and Up to Date guidance documents for COVID, flu and RSV
NHSN Support Services for SNFs
For a more comprehensive list of NHSN support options the HAI Epi Team can provide to skilled nursing facilities, see the NHSN Support and Technical Assistance for Skilled Nursing Facilities flyer.
NHSN Reporting Updates and Trainings
CDC's July 2024 NHSN Virtual Post-Acute Care Training is available on the Post-Acute Care (PAC) Training website
You can now access the Videos, PDF slides, and CE Information for the Virtual Post-Acute Care Training for Long-term Care Component, Dialysis Component, and Healthcare Personnel Safety (Healthcare Personnel Vaccination) Surveillance and Analytics. Click the "2024 PAC NHSN Training – Videos and Slides" button to view.
NHSN Person-Level Vaccination Forms: Quarter 4 2024 Updates for Long-Term Care Facilities
To learn how the new RPV reporting effective Sept 30, 2024 will impact the Person-Level COVID-19 Vaccination forms, please register for the next training or review the training slides:
When: Oct 16th, 2024 @ 1:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Register in advance for this webinar!
WA DOH NHSN Dashboards Updated
The Washington State Department of Health has updated the three HAI dashboards with data from 2023. The dashboards are available through the HAI Epidemiology and Reporting webpage or through the WTN HAI landing page, where more information can be found on the data included in the dashboards.
The Device-Associated HAI Dashboard contains data on catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) and central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI). The Laboratory-Identified (LabID) HAI dashboard contains data for hospital-onset Clostridiodes difficile infection (CDI) and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteremia. The Surgical Site Infection (SSI) dashboard contains data for SSIs following colon surgeries and abdominal hysterectomies. The dashboards show annual data for the last five years of reportable HAI data. It also shows the progress that hospitals in our state have made in reducing HAIs, and how our hospitals are currently performing.
NHSN Epidemiology Email
The NHSN Epidemiology Team has a dedicated inbox. Please email the EPI team for any NHSN related questions, issues, or concerns. This will allow our team to respond to your message in a timely manner.
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Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) |
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Puget Sound Chapter
The Puget Sound Region APIC chapter meets on the fourth Thursday of every month from noon to 2:00 p.m.
- We review important legislative updates, IPC news, and educational opportunities.
- Journal club and round table discussions keep IPs up-to-date on recent activity in the IPC field, as well as connect with local IPs.
Register in advance for meetings. Links to registration sites can be found on our social media and website a few weeks prior.
APIC Podcasts:
AJIC Monthly Podcast
New Episode:
Recent Episodes:
Tune in the first Thursday of each month for new episodes.
APIC Monthly 5 Second Rule Podcast
Recent Episodes:
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HAI/AR Program Publications
WA DOH Influenza Update for Week 36 now available!
The weekly summary is available.
State Summary
- Influenza-like illness activity was minimal during week 36.
- To date, 132 lab-confirmed influenza deaths have been reported for the 2023-2024 season.
- To date, 92 influenza-like illness outbreaks in long term care facilities have been reported for the 2023-2024 season.
- During week 36, 0.6 percent of visits among Influenza-like Illness Network (ILINet) participants were for influenza-like illness, which was below the baseline of 1.9 percent.
- During week 36, 0.6 percent of specimens tested by WHO (World Health Organization) and NREVSS (National Respiratory and Enteric Virus Surveillance System) collaborating laboratories in Washington were positive for influenza.
- Influenza A was reported to the ILINet surveillance system during week 36.
The Washington State Department of Health Influenza Update reports will be produced monthly for weeks 21-39 this summer and will resume a weekly reporting cadence beginning on week 40 this fall.
Historic influenza reports
DOH creates influenza reports for healthcare providers and public health including:
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 CDC HAN Update: Prevention Strategies for Mpox
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On September 23, CDC issued a Health Alert Network (HAN) Health Update about the ongoing outbreak of clade I mpox in Central and Eastern Africa. Travelers to countries with sustained spread of clade I mpox, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, should be aware of activities associated with transmission risk. Specific recommendations can be found in the HAN.
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New Sepsis Educational Materials for Children
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CDC has expanded its suite of sepsis educational materials with two new toolkits for parents, caregivers of children, youth organizations, and schools. Use the information in this Safe Healthcare blog post to teach parents and other caregivers about sepsis, including the signs and symptoms and how to act fast, so you can protect children from sepsis.
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Join the Making Dialysis Safer for Patients Coalition 4-Part Webinar Series
This 4-part webinar series spotlights barriers and solutions to improving dialysis infection prevention and control in non-traditional dialysis settings. Presentations will feature speakers from the 2024 Making Dialysis Safer for Patients In-Person Workshop. Each webinar has its own registration so please check the flyer for additional information!
Dentists
Improve Patient Safety by Optimizing Antibiotic Prescribing: A new Safe Healthcare Blog Post, by Dr. Kennedy, DMD, MPH, MMSc, encourages dental prescribers to improve patient care and save lives by changing prescribing behaviors and optimizing how antibiotics are used in practice. Find out how dental teams can improve antibiotic prescribing and find dental antibiotic stewardship resources here.
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Antibiotic Stewardship Office Hours
Thank you to everyone who joined our September session, “USAAW 2024.” This session reviewed CDC’s upcoming activities, publications, and events related to U.S. Antibiotic Awareness Week and World Antimicrobial Awareness Week occurring November 18–24, 2024. Slides and a recording are available on SharePoint. Please email with any questions.
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You are subscribed to Healthcare-Associated Infections and Antimicrobial Resistance (HAI&AR) Newsletter for Washington State Department of Health. This information has recently been updated, and is now available. If you have not yet subscribed, you can use the button below.
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